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The ERC-funded Egalitarianism Project hosted by the University of Bergen aims at a multi-dimensional critical approach to the issue of Egalitarianism. The concept of Egalitarianism is extraordinarily broad, as is the no less nebulous ideal of equality, having virtually ontological value in modern Euro-American thought, increasingly so globally.

The exotic, in its countless connotations, stirs our imagination. Marvelous and mysterious, dangerous, deceptive, or corrupt, the exotic is an inherently relational term that presupposes an awareness of Otherness. Etymologically, it is rooted in externality, derived from the Greek adverb éxo (outside) and adjective exotikós (from the outside).1 Seen as what comes from the outside—the strange, the outlandish, the unexpected—the exotic predicates evaluations, metaphors, and categories of knowledge (Fernandez 1986; Lévi-Strauss 1962). For many, anthropology as an idea and as an academic discipline begins in the encounter with the exotic.

This article was first published as a text feature in the Australian Arena Magazine, issue 145, February 2017.

All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy.- Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

– Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

The power of the people is always greater than that of the people in power.

– Wael Ghonim, a Google executive at the time of Egypt’s popular uprising against President Mubarak

When Hillary Clinton attempted to counter Trump and his supporters’ populist attacks by explicitly branding them a ‘basket of deplorables, racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it’ she was hoist on her own petard. The chant ‘Lock Her Up’ drew its enormous potency from her alleged corruption and from her being a figurehead of the ruling Washington elites who have leached the American state’s democratic egalitarian idealism. Calling Trump and his followers racist and sexist was waving a red rag to a bull. She played on a negative view of populism, an immanent anti-democratic elitism, which elicited outrage, making a mockery of her own populist appeal. The occasionally rank dominant-class prejudice that accompanies anti-populist sentiments (inclusive of those that assume it is a working-class phenomenon, when it is frequently cross class) was egregiously apparent in a CNN pundit’s observation that Trump ‘was throwing red meat to the base’ in his highly controversial travel bans.

Populism has a bad press. It’s a synonym for extremism, racism and exclusionary prejudice of all kinds; the very antithesis of democracy and the orientation of state systems to egalitarian social and political ideals. There is no doubt that this is one of the possibilities of populism, as the rise of rightist extremism throughout much of the Western hemisphere demonstrates today. But populism, even of such a negative kind is born of an orientation to democratic value, even if this is of the Orwellian Animal Farm contradictory kind, where some have more value or rights than others. Populism is not by definition undemocratic, even though it may produce those effects. The current reaction to Trump is no less the force of populism.

Picture 1: The main base of UPP Alemão strategically perched on a hilltop above the favelas

Tomas Salem

After decades of soaring violence, partly as the result of a public security paradigm articulated through the rhetoric of war on drugs, and of aggressive and militarized policing, the first Pacifying Police Units (Unidades da Policia Pacificadora, UPPs) were established in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2009. The UPPs or Pacification Project, as it is also known, allegedly sought to bring peace and security to the city, and to the impoverished residents of the favelas [informal settlements]. Arguably, the pacification strategy represents the largest shift in the local government’s policy towards the favelas since Brazil’s return to democracy in the mid 80’s. Between January and July 2015 I followed police officers at three different UPPs, as part of the ethnographic fieldwork for my MA thesis in Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. My objective was to analyze the changes in the exercise of state power towards favela residents through the pacification. Specifically, I focused on how patrol officers at the UPPs enacted a particular state order in the favelas, and at the institutional attempts at producing a new police subjectivity through a taming or pacification of what I describe as the wild masculinity of patrol officers. In my thesis, I tied the process of pacification of the favelas, and of the police, to larger political and economic dynamics on a national and global scale. This text is a brief summary of my main findings and conclusion.[1]

How is egalitarianism negotiated in self-proclaimed egalitarian intentional communities?

This project is an exploration of inner dynamics of intentional communities in the US, and the history and meaning of utopian egalitarian social experimentation in relation to historical contexts in modern times. Intentional communities are groups of people coming together in most often residential spaces to achieve a high degree of social and communal cohesion. Through the tensions between the individual and the communal I explore the micro-negotiations of egalitarian communards and their understanding of egalitarian and in-egalitarian dialectics.

What does the notion of the urban mean when the city is replaced by megapolises lacking physical centres and clear-cut boundaries? What egalitarian and inegalitarian possibilities and dynamics do such globally emergent urban configurations hold? Many of the new structures, and in particular in what is commonly referred to as the global South, experience the disintegration of a centrally governed city with a polis that was often colonially imposed. Simultaneously and in both the global North and South many urban areas experience an increased use of automated and digital systems of governance that emerge in tandem with urban zones that reflect corporate forms of experimentation, privatization and, thus, fragmentation.

This project aims to compare mainly two large-scale urban contexts in what is commonly labelled the global South and North, namely, Maputo and San Francisco. Such juxtaposition addresses the questions raised by critically investigating ongoing and future urban configurations in terms of how these constrain, structure or open up egalitarian possibilities. This will include analysing the socio-political impact of various forms of technology (such as implementation of the Internet of Things, infrastructural arrangements and digital surveillance and tracking possibilities), novel forms of ordering urban space (such as privatized cities, gated communities, security arrangements), emergent forms of politics (such as autonomous or occupied areas, urban citizen-run zones or riots) and questions relating to the urban comprising depositories of wealth.

Picture 1: Bairro Polana Caniço, Maputo, January 2016. Eradication of housings of the poor as part of rapid gentrification. New gated community condominiums about to be constructed in the background. Photo: Bjørn Enge Bertelsen.